Left Click on mouse won't open folders

[Kiaya611]

Yesterday, out of the blue, I was no longer able to left click on a folder to open it. If I right click and then choose open, it will open. I get the error message:

"This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action. Please install a program or, if one is already installed, create an association in the Default Programs control panel."

I have not made any changes lately and I don't know what could cause this as I have never experienced this on any version of windows. I am running Windows 10 Enterprise on my Dell XPS 8100 with an Intel i5 Processor at 3.20Mhz and 8 GBs of

DDR3 RAM, and a 1 TB HDD which is about 1/2 full/empty.

If anyone has experienced this, please let me know as I have LOTS of security running and still something looks to have gotten through.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Steven

 

[gpobernardo]

Can you enable viewing of the file extensions in your folder options and verify if those folders are actually folders? They should have no file extension of they are indeed still folders, but if some malware has replaced them with something that looks like folders then they should have some file extension (probably).

 

[Kiaya611]

Hi gpobernardo,

That is one of the first things I checked...to see in Properties of the folder, if it showed that it was in fact a folder and in each case, it said, "File Folder". This has stumped me. Back in the beginning when I upgraded to Windows 10 Enterprise (From 7), there were numerous issues, but after the initial issues, everything seemed to be corrected, either through updates or by me searching for solutions. I have to say though, that this version of Windows has taken/required more regedits than I have ever had to do and although I am completely comfortable using regedit, it seems strange that Microsoft has built things in such a way that you actually have to edit the register to get it to operate properly.

 

[_Emi_]

Hi gpobernardo,

That is one of the first things I checked...to see in Properties of the folder, if it showed that it was in fact a folder and in each case, it said, "File Folder". This has stumped me. Back in the beginning when I upgraded to Windows 10 Enterprise (From 7), there were numerous issues, but after the initial issues, everything seemed to be corrected, either through updates or by me searching for solutions. I have to say though, that this version of Windows has taken/required more regedits than I have ever had to do and although I am completely comfortable using regedit, it seems strange that Microsoft has built things in such a way that you actually have to edit the register to get it to operate properly.

But is it the first time you upgrade?
because upgrade has never been the greatest thing... maybe you always bought a device and it was already installed for you?
that's the difference, if you want the best windows 10 experience you would have to clean install, it was like this before windows 10. but the difference it's by having windows 10 free for 7 and 8 users, the amount of users upgrading is many times higher than when the upgrade was paid.

But it's strange, you have Windows Enterprise, which we know it's only for business. so you in theory didn't have a free upgrade. but anyway! I will not question about it.

But yeah, there are sometimes strange malware that gets in folders and when you double click they execute programs on silence.
you can't really navigate on file explorer by expanding folders and subfolders?
who knows what happened. I hope you set hidden folders to be visible so you can see if it's just a fake folder thing and the real folder is hidden. that happened to me once, I plugged this android phone I had on a schools computer (and people question why I hate android) and it infected my sd phones sd card, it hid everything, files and folder, and made fake files and folders that would execute code, the folders looked like folders. then I found out the real folders were hidden, and I was just executing stuff like *****.

I don't know exactly what your problem is though, so I will just suggest some stuff so you can troubleshoot yourself.
but all I can say it's get xyplorer and see if it can open it. or type the address and see what happens on file explorer.
what about expanding folders on left panel to the folder you wanted to open yesterday? does it say the same thing?

also you could try:
File Association Fixes for Windows 8 - The Winhelponline Blog

and you can try and see if those folder regfiles would help you.
it's for windows 8 but maybe it would work on Windows 10, I don't think many things have changed. I checked and it was the same on my registry, just few entries I checked quickly.
so it could fix your problem. it seems some people got that weird problem on win7 and win8.

 

[gpobernardo]

Hello, too,

It's a bit unfortunate that your experience isn't as smooth as ideal (I'm thankful my upgrade was smooth), but there can be a lot of factors/causes for that issue - including malware as pointed out by _Emi_. Windows Defender isn't exactly the best protection there is at this point (but that depends on your level of risk). I've used WD from Day 1 in Windows 10, and it hasn't given me any notification or warning about any unwanted programs/viruses, etc. It could be running silently in the background, killing them without notifying me. Then strange pop-ups started appearing one day - had to use an anti-malware tool to actually remove them since WD wasn't detecting anything wrong.

From that day onwards, I've used a third-party (reliable) anti-virus software for my PC and I haven't experienced anything strange after that.

You may consider this option and see if it brings positive results.